Introduction Post

Art of the 1940's

The 1940's were a time of change. America had recovered from the Great Depression but the country was still dealing with its impacts. Many of the children that grew up during the Depression turned to art as adults to help document their experiences. 

The world was reeling from the outbreak of World War II while still attempting to process the collective trauma of World War I. Hitler's oppression of artists he deemed "degenerate" as well as the influx of European immigrants fleeing war exposed many young American artists to the novel ideas about art being developed in Europe. 

This post will explore these changes through the work produced by 3 artists in the decade between 1940 - 1950; Jacob Lawrence, Pablo Picasso, and Mark Rothko.

Jacob Lawrence (1917 - 2020)

Jacob Lawrence  was an American painter from New Jersey who was known for his portrayals of contemporary African-American life. 

One of his best known works is a series of 60 panels called The Migration Series and depicts the perilous journey to the North undertaken by Southern Blacks starting during World War I. They were fleeing the systemic oppression of the Jim Crow Era South as well as moving North to find better pay in the factories of the North as those workers were called to the war effort (History, 2021). Lawrence's parents were among those migrants. 

"The Migration Series begins and ends with images of the train station (panels 1, 60); the action simulating a train journey unfolds in progression from painting to painting with clear stopping points and pauses along the way (MoMA, Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series). 

The Migration Series: Panel 1 by Jacob Lawrence (1940-41)

The first panel of the series depicts the start of the journey as Southern Blacks board trains for Norther industrial cities. Lawrence was influenced by the Cubist movement and we see elements of that distinctive style in these panels. The blank faces of the people convey the loss of individual identity that was common to the Southern Black experience. In the Jim Crow South, if you were Black, it did not matter what else you were. The cool color palette, interspersed with dynamic reds and yellows, lends to the sense of this mass of people as one collective entity. 

 

The Migration Series: Panel 49 by Jacob Lawrence (1940-41)

However, when they got to the North, they did not find the acceptance they were hoping for. Instead, they found a more subtle racism as depicted in this panel. Here we see a segregated restaurant form in the North. Note that the White customers are painted with faces while the Black people are still faceless and lacking identity. This theme is repeated throughout the series. 

What is particularly striking about the series is the fact that the issues it explores, the legacy of slavery, systemic racism that permeates American society, how Black communities define themselves, competition for resources, and privilege, are issues that we still grapple with over 80 years later. 

I am including a link that contains all 60 panels of the series. 

https://arthistoryproject.com/timeline/20th-century/1940-1949/

Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973)

Picasso, one of the most well known artists of the Modern Era, was living in Paris when the Nazis took over the city in June of 1940 (Wojcik, 2020). Picasso was already a well respected artist by this time, having already completed some of the most celebrated works of his career. 

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Picasso did not flee the Paris during the Nazi occupation and many of the works he produced during and immediately after this time reflect the horrors and atrocities that he witnessed (Wojcik, 2020). 

"Why do you think I date everything I make? Because it is not enough to know an artists work. One must also know when he made them, why, how, under what circumstances." - Pablo Picasso (Wojcik, 2020)

Picasso had already had developed a reputation as a political artist and was outspoken in his criticism of the Fascist Franco Regime in his native Spain. His depiction of the bombing of the city of Guernica by Fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War is considered by many to be one of his greatest works. https://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/collection/artwork/guernica

Near the end of the war, the world was made aware of the horrors of the Nazi Concentration Camps. Newsreel footage and photographs in newspapers depicted the abominable conditions. Picasso's The Charnel House was influenced by these images. 

The Charnel House by Pablo Picasso (1944-45)

"The Charnel House was inspired by newspaper war photographs, the tones of which are reflected in its somber black-and-white palette. The central jumble of figures—a murdered family sprawled beneath a dining table—might suggest the piles of corpses discovered in Nazi concentration camps upon their liberation. While Guernica, a commentary on the Spanish Civil War, may be seen as signaling the violent beginning of World War II, The Charnel House marks its horrific end (MoMA, The Charnel House)."

Death imagery was a common feature of Picasso's work during the 1940's. 

1942's Still Life with Skull of Ox presents a dark, foreboding color palette. Still life paintings had often juxtaposed images of pastoral life (fruit, bread, flowers) with skulls depicting death and decay. Here, Picasso carries on the tradition, but the Cubist style adds an element of disruption to the painting. The war has distorted and deformed life and even nature cannot escape its all encompassing disfigurement.

The chaotic lines of the ox skull are in direct contrast to the straight lines of the color block background highlighting the disordered nature of the world at war. 

As Picasso's European colleagues fled to America, they brought with them many of the new techniques and ideas that they had been exploring. "When the refugee artists arrived in the United States, they brought with them many of the guiding models of modernism, joining the abstraction of the old world with the spirit of the new (MoMA, Art of the Forties)."

Mark Rothko (1903 - 1970)

Rothko was born in modern day Latvia as Marcus Rothkowitz. When he was 10 years old, his parents immigrated to Portland, Or (National Gallery of Art, 2021). 

While he primarily remembered for his large panels of colored rectangles, many are unfamiliar with his earlier work. The tumultuous events of the 1940's heavily influenced Rothko and can be seen as a transitional phase between his early more figurative work and the deeply abstract paintings that he would become most famous for.

"During the 1940s Rothko's imagery became increasingly symbolic. In the social climate of anxiety that dominated the late 1930s and the years of World War II, images from everyday life—however unnaturalistic—began to appear somewhat outmoded. If art were to express the tragedy of the human condition, Rothko felt, new subjects and a new idiom had to be found. He said, 'It was with the utmost reluctance that I found the figure could not serve my purposes. . . . But a time came when none of us could use the figure without mutilating it' (National Gallery of Art, 2021)." 

One of these European influences that Rotko dabbled with in the 1940's was Surrealism. Rothko was also fascinated by myth and allegory. He often used painting to help find the universal truths in the stories that we tell. 

Gethsemane, painted in 1944, is Rothko's depiction of the betrayal of Jesus Christ by Judas Iscariot in the titular garden. 

Fear of betrayal and death are universal themes in story. Here Rothko divorces his work from any overtly religious imagery in order to explore these truths absent the emotional connection that we may have to religion. 

The dark shape that inhabits the center of the frame is crushing and piercing the other elements of the painting. It the dynamic swirls and curved lines revealing that we have captured this moment mid-act. The lack of distinct background and context allows the viewer to understand that this story, and the fears it represents, manifest regardless of time or place.  

Rothko challenges us to image the shapeless nameless fears that are omnipresent in the human experience. 

As Rothko continued to explore through his art, his work became more abstract, focusing on color and loosely defined shapes to convey emotion. 

Untitled [Multiform] by Mark Rothko, 1948

By the late 1940's we see the origins of the famous Rothko rectangles as his explorations in multi-form color block objects become further distilled. He has completely moved away from any figure work and is now primarily focused on the relationship between shape and color. He also stopped titling his paintings so as to not influence the viewer's experience and interpretation (National Gallery of Art, 2021). 

By the end of the 1940's, American artists had taken the concepts that they were exposed to in Europe and by European ex-pats and developed them into a distinctly American art form, Abstract Expressionism. It was a celebration of the American ideal of freedom and some of our most celebrated artists come from this generation of painters, Polluck, Motherwell, De Kooning, and countless others. 

Works Cited

History.com Editors. "The Great Migration." 26 January 2021. History.com. 11 April 2021. https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/great-migration

Museum of Modern Art. "Art of the Forties." 1991. MoMA.org. 13 April 2021. https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/330

—. "Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series." 1995. MoMA.org. 11 April 2021. https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/444

—. "The Charnel House." 2008. MoMa.org. 11 April 2021. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/78752

National Gallery of Art. "Mark Rothko: The Early Years." 2021. NGA.gov. 11 April 2021. https://www.nga.gov/features/mark-rothko/mark-rothko-early-years.html

Wojcik, Nadine. "Art in the Times of War: Picasso during WWII." 14 February 2020. DW.com. 11 April 2021. https://www.dw.com/en/art-in-times-of-war-picasso-during-wwii/g-52352900